Well, I would assume that there is either evidence that we haven't seen, or that the charges aren't a joke in Sweden. The arrest warrent was under review for a long time, I'm willing to bet they can make it stick. He's not journalist. A journalist wouldn't have released all the cables. They would have released the ones that were worthy of a story. A journalist would have redacted information that they knew could/can hurt people. Look at what real journalist are writing about. Not all 120,000 cables. They are just writing about the ones that are news worthy. 90% of them are banal jibber jabber. No, he's a guy that likes to yell fire in a movie theater, laugh about it, and then wonder why people are out to get him. He had a good idea, and a good outlet. But his ego has blossomed far beyond where it should be and will be the down fall of both himself and the credibility of his site. Well the Ozzies want to arrest him for spilling state secrets as much as the Americans do, and he's a citizen, so no surprise there. They wanted him before we did. Shutting his PO box seems like he's getting off lightly. And it's not bad luck, he clearly brought this on himself. He lied to the swiss and then made it public that he had an account there. Had he kept his mouth shut, they wouldn't have found it for a while. And again, I doubt the charges are ********. You weren't there, and you haven't seen the evidence. If you did what he did in the UK or the US and she went to the police, the charges would be the same. No means no. It's the classic Male view of a girl saying she was raped. Just because it's him doesn't mean there is a different standard. The paypal? Well that's just the US reminding him that there is the internet, and then there is IRL. In real life, he's their bitch.
It was also dismissed immediately by the judge in Stockholm who saw it and then taken back up by a judge in Gothenburg. That's immediately fishy. If I was charged with assault in Aberdeen and the charges were immediately dropped, and then a judge in Liverpool decided to take up the case and charge me with assault again I'd be immediately dubious of their motivations. Regardless, we shall see how this pans out in the next weeks and months. What information in the cables has, could or can hurt someone? I see no reason not to release all the cables, if they're truly that uninteresting, banal jibber jabber as you put it, no-one will read them and their release will be a pointless but harmless waste of server space. If they are actually interesting to some people, worthy of a story as you put it, then they will be read and he is doing the job of a journalist, albeit without much op-ed. Where did you hear that? I've seen no evidence that the Australian government, try as it might, has anything to arrest Assange for. They're not even Australia's secrets so it's very unlikely the man can be arrested in Australia. Sure, the Australian government is attempting to find something to bollock him with, much to the disgust of many Australians, but there doesn't appear to anything illegal about what he's done in Australia. As for the account, it's been public for quite some time, IIRC I saw it when I was on the site back in the Iraq war log days. If he did what he did in the UK and the girls went to the police they'd have been politely told to keep their knickers on in future. All the sex was consensual (This is admitted to by all involved). Rape is definitionally the crime of having sexual intercourse with someone who does not consent, which he did not do. He had sex with someone who desired him to use a condom, but when he didn't want to, consented to having sex with him anyway, and later regretted that.
How about keeping it in the middle: he may be an asshat in his personal life (but innocent until proven guilty), and even (most probably) a bit of a narcissist. Big deal. As I have said before: so were Bush and Blair. At least Assange hasn't illegally invaded any countries yet. Not the messiah, but that doesn't necessarily make him a naughty, naughty boy.
I'm willing to concede the possibility that there may be something to the charges, but I'd ask you to concede the possibility that they are indeed politically motivated. It's not as though using the courts to pursue political ends has never been done before. As of this morning 960 of 251,287 cables had been released, and it appears that all have been checked for sensitive information on sources and this has been redacted. Allow me to quote from one of the cables released yesterday... The Swiss closed his account, Paypal took $70,000 of his money. There is a difference.
Watching the news now (C4). I love the fact that nobody is sure that he has actually broken any laws, yet all the US Republicans are calling to have him executed... Rape allegations and blatant narcissism aside, the guy is a legend in my books,
To me, that is the most worrying aspect of this whole story - the ease with which senior political figures will demand a person's assassination. It is disgusting.
Theres a word for what politicians are going to make him into, rightly or wrongly, a matyr. The fact that they are using rape allegations to explain their interest in him is laughable, how many other people accused of rape get this much of attention?
Ayatollah Palin amirite? Right wing Republicans, all the murderousness of nut-job Iranian ayatollahs, none of the bearded coolness.
As I mentioned in another thread, when Woodward and Bernstein blew the lid off Watergate, nobody fussed about the fact that they got their information through a security leak or that they revealed corruption at the highest level of government just as it was fighting a War on Communism. Woodward has also been accused of narcissism, lazy reporting, sycophantism, publishing irrelevant detail and failure of judgement. Bernstein ended up a gossip columnist and a Hollywood celebrity serial dater. Does that detract from their journalistic achievement? Most people think not.
Last night I donated to wiki leaks. My reasons are conveniently explained here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/12/4/213017/538which I found after trying to work out best how to explain my reasoning. The more pressure the world puts on wikileaks the more I intend to support it. I don't normally donate to causes but this looks like it could be the focal point for arguements about free speech and liberty and I for one want to stand on the side of right.
He put himself forward as a lightning rod, the fall guy for the organisation. He knew there would be backlash and he made himself the focal point for it. He wanted to be the guy who threats were made against who was attacked and maligned. By doing so he is trying to expose the hold governments have on companies and the media. If putting yourself in the firing line for what you believe to protect a network of people behind you for rights, transparency, accountability and liberty is not being a hero then I have no idea what is.
It seems Anon are well and truly involved in this fight now. While their attack on Paypal hasn't ammounted to very much yet, it's confirmed (and testable) that they've taken down the Swiss Postbank website, some random swedish website no-one cares about, and www.mastercard.com I think senate.gov is next to be taken offline, although I suspect Visa have got it coming too.
Actually, only 960 have been made public, but all of them have been released in bulk to 4 media outlets. They, thank god, showed some common sense and restraint and only published the juicy ones....redacted. But the Guardian and Der Speigle got the lump dump. Which is how the US was able to confirm what they suspected was in them. The threat from the wikileaks isn't to release more cables, rather to publish the rest all at once. Hence my point about them not being journalists, they made exclusive deals with media outlets.
Indeed, donations will be possible for a short period of time as supposedly it "takes time" to disable payments to a specific group, but they've announced they're doing it "pending investigations". Interestingly, you can still donate to organisations associated, supported by, and staffed by Ku Klux Klanners. That's Visa for you, racist rednecks? No problem. Freedom of information? Kill it! Kill it dead! Not to take the pedantry to a higher level, but actually every single one of the 251 thousand has been released, they're just encrypted. All that's needed is for a 256 bit AES encryption key to be released to unlock the files and everyone will be able to access all of them. I don't entirely follow your logic though that wikileaks making deals with other journalistic organisations who have a far bigger readerbase and funding makes them not journalists. I mean by that logic reuters or AP workers aren't journalists, because not many people get their news from Reuters directly, but millions of people get their news from normal media outlets which was actually found out by Reuters. There's no difference between wikileaks and a proper news service here. Then again it seems to me that the main reason people are describing them as non-journo's is so that wikileaks don't have 1st amendment rights in the US courts.
